For those who have not noticed, ATOM feeds have now been enabled on the forums. These are per-forum feeds, not per-topic. There is a general feed available at http://www.reallifeforums.com/feed.php, and forum feeds are available in most browsers by clicking on the RSS feed logo. You can then take these and add them into your favorite reader. I've tested them with Google Reader, and they work pretty well.

A couple of things to note: These are ATOM feeds, and while many RSS readers can read ATOM, some trip over it. Also, the name on the feed will default to "Real Life Forums" even for an individual forum. Within the feed, it will display the forum and topic title. Also, it will not display posts older than 30 days, so if you look at low-traffic forums, you'll find that they may not display the full ten per feed allowed.

Baghead is busy with a lot of things right now, and can't quite get to quick reply at the moment, but that is coming. However, it will be implemented selectively, starting with Forum Games and a couple of others yet to be decided. I want to see how it goes, as I would like to see more traffic but not an HTTP-based IRC server.

There are a couple of other things on the near horizon, but I don't want to get too far ahead of myself.

The maintenance window went a little longer than planned, running about an hour instead of the 20 minutes I had expected. OK, a few things here...

First of all, the forum is now running on the current phpBB code revision, 3.0.7-PL1. This improves some issues with ATOM feeds and a few other things here and there.

Second, the RLF style has been updated to use the Quick Reply. The six or so people using proSilver would have been able to use it if they had seen it in Forum Games. However, now that it works in the RLF theme, it should be a little more widely used. Please note, however, that it is still considered somewhat experimental, and is enabled at the moment in only a few forums, including General, C&C, and Forum Games. We'll see how it goes from there.

Third, there are some new BBCodes, including one requested long ago for YouTube. Again, experimental, and we'll see how things go. However, it's subject to somewhat less abuse than QR, so it will probably be OK.

Fourth, you've probably noticed that I've started some cleanup of the megathreads, starting new ones in a couple of cases. Additional new ones will be started, and I will begin paying closer attention to them and breaking out those that seem to be material for their own threads. I encourage people to consider posting new threads instead of using the megathreads if there's a reasonable chance that the discussion will range a bit. For example, a question about which new car to buy shouldn't go into Stupid Questions. Hopefully, we'll be able to continue picking up the conversation a bit.

Finally, there's something up with the avatars. I don't know what it is, and I'm working on it, but it's also quite late, so I may not get it fixed tonight. You're welcome to re-upload your avatar if you have it around, but I may be doing a file restore on the avatar directory, so if you change it to something new (or even if you don't), it may get reverted and/or broken again. It may be as simple as a binary re-upload of the avatars from backup (which I made before starting the upgrade), or there may be something more to it. We'll see.

Feel free to discuss the new features here. If you find anything other than the avatars that doesn't seem to look or work correctly, please make a note of it in the Support forum.

Would it be possible to move the Quick Reply button below the next page and page number area? Also, would it be possible to have the Quick Reply box be expanded by default? Just curious, as both of these would be helpful...

Try adding:

Code: Select all

div#qr_editor_div { display: block !important; }

to Firefox's userStyle.css

Well, after adding that to .\Chrome\userContent.css and restarting Firefox, that does cause it to be expanded by default. Interesting, thanks! It does seem to confuse the Quick Reply button

EDIT: Dammit. Forgot pictures can only be 800px wide.

Woo quick reply.

Code: Select all

div#qr_showeditor_div { display: none !important; }

Wasn't there also talk of making the forums expand to the size of your monitor? Because my new monitor is 1920x1080 is the forums just looks silly on it.

That version of the theme is still half done. It was put on halt because I was really busy at the time, then Greg announced that he was redesigning the comic site so I was waiting for it to be done so the new theme could be base on that. Perhaps I'll start working on it again soon.

You know what, FireAza? Shut your face! *steals FireAza's monitor*

That said, I'm disappointed by the replacement of 1920x1200 monitors with 1920x1080 monitors. You can still get the former, but the latter are becoming more prevalent. I want more real estate! A couple of sixty pixel bars doesn't really hurt things for me!

Well, it makes it a hellva lot better when watching videos, being that most videos these days are 16:9 aspect ratio, not 16:10. I also like the extra real estate at the edges, fills more of your peripheral vision when playing games

You don't actually get more real estate. You get less - they just cut out some of the top and bottom pixels. Like I said, I don't mind having the bars.

True, there's less total pixels, but what pixels there are are concentrated more on the sides, hence more side real estate

You make no sense. It's the same amount of horizontal real estate, just less vertical. It's like when people used to complain about widescreen DVDs because it "cuts off the top and bottom of the image". Philistines.

FireAza wrote:Wasn't there also talk of making the forums expand to the size of your monitor? Because my new monitor is 1920x1080 is the forums just looks silly on it.

Wide text is hard to read.